During a guest appearance Tuesday night on the Jeff Mayweather Show, boxing ring card girl Ashley Ferrara stated the need for boxing to promote their girls in the same way that MMA does.
“It’s one of the biggest things that boxing needs to change. You see what the UFC does. Every time you walk into any news stand, Arianny Celeste, Brittney Palmer, the UFC ring card girls, they are front and center. Boxing absolutely needs to get some of these named ring card girls that people can identify with. It’s definitely a marketing value that’s untapped. And that’s one of the things I am most passionate about,” she said when asked about the difference between being a ring card girl in boxing and MMA.
Ashley Ferrara would certainly be the right girl for the job should any of the top promotions decide to do such a thing. Obviously her looks can turn the head of any guy, but she is much more than just another pretty face. A graduate of Yale, she is currently in law school at the University of Oklahoma, shattering the stereotype that ring card girls lack much talent besides walking in high heels and holding up a sign.
“There’s no reason that Top Rank can’t have a named girl. The amount of marketing dollars these girls could pull into the sport, you may be able to develop programs like pensions and benefits with extra dollars around. It could be great for everybody,” Ashley added when speaking about the overall benefits to promoting the girls.
Boxing has been a little slow to abandon tradition in the past, so promoting their ring card girls may not be something that happens anytime soon. However, with beautiful, intelligent women like Ashley Ferrara available to them, it makes no sense to limit what they can offer to the sport. Who knows, once she finishes law school, perhaps, as she mentioned, she will become a promoter herself and personally address the problem.
http://youtu.be/C6_9K5RWazI
